496 STUDIES IN GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 
vince oneself of the fact that a moist glass plate will serve as 
a complete screen against all electrostatic effects of a charged 
body upon the preparation. The entire surface of our bodies 
is covered with such a screen in the form of the superficial 
layers of the epidermis. In case we are not dealing with 
enormous discharges, every thought of utilizing these effects 
in medicine is shut out. Since in all these cases we are in 
reality dealing only with the effects of currents (even when 
we are using an unusually powerful machine), I consider it 
more rational to use the galvanic current upon the skin of 
the patient directly instead of utilizing the cumbersome 
roundabout method of discharging a highly charged body 
near a patient. 
Finally I must call attention to a fundamental error of 
Danilewsky in his idea of the nature of electrical effects upon 
protoplasm. Danilewsky believes with Chauveau and d’Ar- 
sonval that electricity acts only as a ‘mechanical stimulus.” 
Nous possédons, sur ce point, des indications dans les tras- 
intéressantes recherches de M.d’Arsonval. Dans sa communication 
4 la Société de Biologie de Paris, du 4 juillet 1891, M. d’Arsonval 
relate que ses propres recherches sur irritation électrique et méca- 
nique des nerfs confirment entiérement les vues de M. Chauveau 
qui, dés 1859, déclarait que l’électricité agit uniquement comme 
excitant mécanique, surtout & son point de sortie et en raison de la 
densité & ce point. 
In contradiction of this idea I should like to point out 
that Faraday’s idea of electrolysis has become one of the 
pillars of modern physics and chemistry. In living matter 
at is only the electrolytes which conduct the current.’ 
1In a book which Danilewsky has since published he has accepted my view as 
far as the ionic conception of electrical stimulation is concerned. [1903] 
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